Love Is For Children
by ColorOfAngels
Summary: Most of the world sees Darcy Lewis as a 26 year old lab assistant who just happened to fall into a crazy Avenger-adjacent life. What they don't know is that she wasn't always Darcy Lewis, she's much older than she looks, and her past is far more entwined with certain Avengers than any of them realize.
1. GLAVA ODIN - END OF THE ROAD

A/N Hello everyone! I did not fall off the face of the planet, but my muse did take a 6 month walk about without any kind of warning :/ BUT! I have been writing a lot lately and working on some new stuff for you guys so hopefully I'm back now. This particular story has been sitting on my hard drive for a long time unposted, but since it's my birthday today :D I wanted to give you guys a birthday present from me and this chapter was sitting all ready to go, so I hope you enjoy it!

I also have to give a huge shout out to Alexandra926 for being the best beta and cheerleader ever and wrangling all my tense shift and reminding me commas are a thing :P

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"Please tell me that's your banana bread."

Darcy looked up from the stainless steel mixing bowl tucked against her body, spotting her favorite super soldier standing in the doorway to the common room kitchen. "Steve!" she exclaimed, a bright grin splitting her face. "Well, what'll you give me if it is?"

Heading in her direction, he tapped his chin mockingly as he pretended to think about it. "My undying love and affection?"

"I thought I already had that," she teased her boyfriend of almost six months.

"You're not wrong," he agreed, as he leaned in to give her a proper hello.

"When did you get home?" she asked, pulling away slightly. "I thought you wouldn't be back until the end of the week."

"Finished the mission early and we touched down about 20 minutes ago," Steve explained, still holding her tight. "I took a quick shower and was going to forage for food, and then I was going to go looking for you and try to surprise my girl."

"Mission accomplished, consider me surprised. Lucky you, you got two for one," she said lifting her face to ask for another kiss, a request which he was more than happy to oblige.

"Mmmm, I missed you," he hummed against her lips, even as his stomach audibly growled.

"I missed you too and there's leftover Thai in there from last night that I don't think anyone has gotten to yet," she advised with a laugh as his belly continued to gurgle. "And, for your information, this will be my banana bread if you can wait another hour."

"For that, I'd wait all day," he grinned, rummaging through the fridge before popping the leftover containers into the microwave.

Darcy couldn't help but smile back before her curiosity got the best of her. "So who's the other part of _we_?" she asked, one eyebrow quirked. In the nine months that she'd lived in the tower following that whole Dark Elves mess in London, she'd gotten to know all the usual suspects, and she'd seen everyone in the past week and a half that Steve had been off on a mission for SHIELD.

"Natasha," Steve answered, pulling his food out of the microwave and taking it to sit at the bar so he could continue to talk to her while he ate and she baked. "Fury gave us both some downtime and she decided to come back with me, to see for herself what Tony was working on for her."

"Ah, the infamous Black Widow," Darcy said lightly, hiding the fact that she felt like she'd been sucker punched in the stomach. "Once I meet her I'll have collected the whole Avengers set."

"I always forget that you haven't met Nat yet."

"Nope," she said, popping the P, finishing mixing her bread with more force than was strictly necessary. "Not yet."

Tony was living in the Tower full-time since he hadn't rebuilt his Malibu home yet, and Bruce had become basically a permanent fixture as well, having found his Science Squad in Tony and Jane. And, of course, where Jane went, Thor was sure to follow whenever he was on world. Steve had only been an infrequent visitor until they had started dating, but now he was staying in the suite that Tony had designed for him almost exclusively unless he was out on a mission. Clint tended to pop in and out at totally random times, but as of yet there had been no sightings of the only representative for Team Estrogen. And the one time the Black Widow _had_ apparently visited the Tower, she and Jane had been on a two week trip to an observatory upstate.

"Well, you probably will soon," he said, between bites of pad thai. "She mentioned that she was hungry when we were flying in, so she should be making her way down here any minute. I know she wants to meet you. I've told her all about you."

"Great!" If her smile was forced, Steve didn't comment. "I need chocolate chips."

She was halfway into the pantry when Steve spoke again. "There you are. We were just talking about you. Nat, this is Darcy Lewis; Darce, this is Natasha Romanoff."

Darcy spun around to see the red-headed assassin standing only ten feet behind her. Startled, she pulled the sides of the bag of apart sending the dark chocolate morsels in every direction.

"Damn it!" Darcy dropped to her knees to try to clean up the mess, and ever the gentleman, Steve rounded the island to help.

When JARVIS deployed the vacuum-bots, the pair abandoned their clean-up attempt and looked up to see that the Black Widow was nowhere to be found.

Darcy covered her face with her flour and chocolate-covered hands and sighed. That was not how she wanted that meeting to go.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

A week later, seven of the longest days of her life, and Darcy still had not officially met Natasha Romanoff. And quite frankly, she was starting to crack under the pressure. She wasn't sleeping well and had become jumpy and irritable. The people closest to her were starting to take note of her unusual behavior.

Natasha was still in the Tower, Darcy knew that much. Just that morning over coffee Jane had mentioned that she had met the spysassin _and_ that she had asked about Darcy. But when she pressed the subject, Jane confessed that she had been preoccupied with a new experiment that she was planning and couldn't quite remember what she had told Natasha about her assistant.

And her anxiety was not improved by the fact that Darcy constantly felt like she was being watched when she was out in the tower's public spaces. She tried to go on like it was any other week, but whether she was cooking in the common kitchen with Thor as her official taster, watching a movie with Steve, trying to coax Tony into eating something other than one of his smoothies, or doing yoga with Bruce, she couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on the back of her neck. It didn't help that sometimes when she looked over her shoulder, she could swear she saw a flash of red hair disappearing around a corner.

She knew she had to do something about her stress levels before she lost the plot completely. It was well after normal business hours, but that didn't mean much to Team Science. However, she was in desperate need of me time, so after making sure that none of her scientists were doing anything that had the potential to blow up the tower, open a rift in the space time continuum, or start World War III, she told them all she was taking off for the night, encouraged them to do the same, before making her way down to the gym.

Changing in the locker room, she headed into the seldom used dance studio. She didn't know who Tony had in mind when he included this room within the fully-equipped gym. Maybe he was just being thorough; but whatever the reason, she was grateful. It was her little secret getaway since none of the other Avengers or Avenger-adjacent residents of the Tower ever seemed to use the room.

After stretching and the rudimentary warm-ups, she laced up her toe shoes, asked JARVIS for some appropriate music and let herself get lost in the dance.

She loved ballet, had always taken class for as far back as she could remember. Her father had told her on more than one occasion that it was in her blood. That her mother had been an extraordinary ballerina who could have danced with the Bolshoi, and Darcy had wanted to live up to that legacy. But even though her father always found a class for her if they stayed in one place long enough, they had moved around too much for her to establish herself in a company. That, added to the fact that once puberty set in, and Darcy had to accept that she would never have the 'ideal' dancers body, meant that it never had never gone beyond a hobby, but that didn't lessen her love for the dance one bit.

"Watch the extension of your left hand on your jetés. It's bending at the wrist."

And in that moment, Darcy realized who Tony had created the studio for. It was so obvious that she was actually offended by herself for not having realized it before. As she turned to face the other woman, she was really grateful she hadn't been _en pointe_ when she was interrupted, since breaking an ankle really wasn't on her list of things to do today.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said, keeping her face blank, even though she wanted to throw up on the floor.

Natasha didn't say anything for a long time, but Darcy knew what she was trying to accomplish with her silence and held fast, steadily meeting her gaze, refusing to break and speak first. This was the path that she had set them on when she had agreed to move into the Tower. She would see it through.

The slight narrowing of her eyes was the only warning that the Black Widow was about to speak. "Darya." It was one word, short and with a bite.

Darcy nodded hard, once. "JARVIS, be a bro and engage privacy mode. And shut off the music." She knew that the coming conversation wasn't one either of them would want on record.

"Of course Ms. Lewis," JARVIS answered.

"I was wondering if and/or when you would realize," Darcy said softly, once JARVIS had fulfilled Darcy's requests.

"What are you doing here?" Natasha questioned.

"Here in the studio or here in the Tower?" Darcy replied.

"In the Tower."

"Oh good, because I thought the other one was pretty obvious," Darcy said, her sass a defense mechanism against her nerves. "Although that one is pretty obvious too. I work here. And, ya know, live here."

Natasha pulled a folder with the distinctive stylized eagle printed on the cover out from under her arm.

"You pulled my SHIELD file." It was a statement, not a question. Darcy wasn't even surprised. "What did you think?"

"It's very thorough," Natasha admitted, as she flipped through it. "Didn't raise any red flags. Darcy Maria Lewis, age twenty-six, born and raised just outside of Victoria, British Columbia." She looked up from the folder and arched an eyebrow. "Canadian? Really?"

Darcy just shrugged.

"Child of Gerald and Renee Lewis. Gerald was a freelance ghostwriter and Renee gave music lessons, both worked from home, both were adopted only-children, both sets of grandparents deceased before you were born. That's smart," she conceded looking up at Darcy again. "Limits the family history and possible acquaintances to be tracked down and questioned."

"I still went back and added three generations of history on the adoptive families after everything went down in New Mexico," Darcy admitted freely. "I didn't think I would be worth the time for SHIELD to dig back that far, but I figured better to be safe than sorry."

Natasha didn't comment, but went back to reading Darcy's file. "Parents passed in a car accident when you were nineteen but you had already received a full ride to Culver University and enough life insurance to see your living expenses through college."

Darcy stood silently, waiting for her to get to the point.

"And then when you needed six science credits to graduate, you just happened to be the only applicant for an internship that just happened to put you at ground zero for Thor's first contact and set you on a path to be here. Living in Stark Tower with total access to the Avengers, completely overlooked as any kind of threat."

"You think I'm a plant." Again, it was a statement.

"Wouldn't you?"

"You think that _they_ sent me here," Darcy continued, her stomach churning. "But to do what? Send back information? Be a sleeper? To get to you?"

"The idea did occur to me."

"Okay, I could see why you would think that," Darcy conceded. "That is just sick enough that they would enjoy that. It's partially why I let you come to me. I was more than a little tempted to seek you out, but I was afraid you might shoot first, ask questions later. But I swear it's not true!" she promised emphatically. "Plus I think if this was just a long game of theirs, there would have just been way too many variables to believe it would all shake out this way. I mean, even if they did think Jane was worth watching, no one could have predicted Thor."

Natasha wasn't swayed and leveled Darcy with a look that had sent hardened killers to their knees.

"Me ending up here…" Darcy trailed off as she tried to find the words that could make Natasha believe her. "I would call it fate if I believed in such a thing. But I don't, so I guess it's just a crazy random happenstance. To be honest, I had fully planned on ditching Darcy Lewis at the end of that internship. I was thinking about moving to California for a while, learning how to surf. But then Thor happened, and SHIELD got involved, and suddenly I was a person of interest and I thought it was too dangerous for Darcy to disappear. I admit, after shit went down in London, I pushed Jane into accepting Stark's offer to move into the Tower, and that was mainly because of you."

"For me?" Natasha's expression was softening, but her body was still tense, ready to strike at any moment if need be.

"Mm-hmm," Darcy confirmed. "It was after the Battle of New York when I first started to think that maybe it was possible. Any footage of you that SHIELD didn't immediately wipe from the internet was grainy and far away, and my memories of you are fuzzier than I wish they were, but they called you the Black Widow, and that was too much for me to ignore. And then, when Thor came back to stay with us while we were in London, he was telling us about the other Avengers and he said you called yourself Natasha Romanoff and told us more about you. Then, I really started to believe that you might be, well, you."

Her voice climbed and her words spilled from her lips faster and faster as she tried and failed to keep her emotions from getting the best of her. "And so, when we moved into the Tower I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up, because I didn't even know if you were still alive or if you really had defected. But I really wanted it to be you. And I've been living here for nine months and I was starting to lose hope that we would ever be in the Tower at the same time. And then, you were suddenly in the kitchen looking just like I remembered, and you were there and then you were gone again. And I didn't know if you would recognize me, or even remember me and I've been alone for so long. I was only fourteen when they came for Papa, and I've been on my own ever since. _I've been alone for so long_."

Tears were freely streaming down Darcy's face, and while her training demanded continued caution, her heart couldn't stand it a moment longer, and for the first time in a very, very long time, Natasha allowed her heart to guide her and before she realized she was moving, she had the younger woman cradled in her arms.

"I'm so sorry _moy rebenok devochka_. I'm so sorry. I'm here now, you're not alone anymore." Natasha continued to murmur comforting words, sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian, as they both sank to the floor.

"Mama," Darcy sobbed into her shoulder, being held by her mother for the first time since she was six years old.

And if Natasha let a few tears of her own sink into Darcy's hair, well, nobody had to know.

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A/N soooooo what do you guys think? want to see more of this story? give me a birthday present in return and let me know! :D


	2. GLAVA VTORAYA – CHILD OF THE RED ROOM

A/N Hello hello! Wow you guys! Thanks so much to everyone who's already read and reviewed this fic so far :D The show of support for this fic already has really exceeded my expectations so thank you again! I did want to give you guys a heads up that there is some red room canon typical violence and something that could possibly considered dubcon? Nothing is explicit but I don't want to blindside anyone. Anyways this chapter should definitely clear up some questions that I know people had after chapter one so I hope you all enjoy!

And once again my ever lasting thanks to Alexandra926 for being an amazing beta and giving this the posting stamp of approval :D

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In all the years that had passed since then, Natasha never had figured out why they had allowed them to be a family. She had many theories that she'd come up with over the years, but they never quite seemed to ring true. Even when she had been living it, she'd wondered. But it wasn't a question she would have dared to try to have answered.

When they'd first informed a still-young Natalia that she was to be bred to the Winter Soldier, she didn't know what to think. Her first instinct was to worry that her handlers had discovered the affair they had carried out on their last mission. And that this was somehow a trap to allow Natalia to incriminate herself, that would end with punishment for them both.

Instead, she was told that they had shown compatibility, both in and out of the field, and that with their enhanced genetic makeup, they were prime candidates for a new program that was being implemented. She had had no desire to bear a child. Nothing in her raising or training had prepared her for this possibility, but she was proud to be chosen and would do her duty for her country as was required of her.

That very night, her few personal belongings were moved to the quarters she would be sharing with the Soldier.

Once they received confirmation that she had conceived, she was pulled from active duty. Her new mission to nurture the life inside of her. The first time that the Winter Soldier was sent out and she was left behind, she didn't expect him to come back to her. After all, he had done his part in their shared mission; the next eight months were up to her.

Three weeks later, she was curled around the toilet; the infamous Black Widow laid low by morning sickness. The doctors said it was a good sign. A sick mother meant a strong future son or daughter for the Glory of the Soviet Union. Natalia didn't know if that was true, but there was nothing she could do about it either way, so she simply accepted what was happening to her.

She was so ill however, that when she heard the bathroom door open when she was supposed to be alone in her rooms, she couldn't even lift her head to look at the intruder, let alone defend herself if needs be. But a hand on the back of her neck told her everything she needed to know about the interloper and she couldn't hold back the moan of pleasure at the feeling of the almost ice-cold metal hand on her overheated skin.

After a few moments she managed to turn her head enough to glance up the Soldier.

"They didn't reassign my quarters," he replied to the question clear in her eyes.

She nodded once before she was sick again. Whether it was an oversight or by design, in that moment they both decided not to draw attention to it and take what comfort from each other that they could.

And so they lived together and slept together. He did everything in his power to alleviate her discomfort and she was always there, waiting for him to get back from any missions he was sent on. But they didn't speak of the baby. It was the elephant in the room. In fact, Natalia tried not think about it at all, but the constant medical exams and her growing body made it hard to ignore the forming life inside of her.

She didn't know if it was by coincidence or by design, but two weeks before the baby was due, the Soldier was sent out on a mission and she was moved to the infirmary where she could be monitored around the clock.

And in the early hours just before dawn, on a cold snowy morning in late January, Natalia went into labor. For hours she bore the pain with a stoic calm as doctors, nurses and scientists buzzed around her. The day came and went, and just before midnight, with a pained groan, Natalia brought a perfect baby girl into the world.

The child was quickly taken to another room and for the first time in weeks Natalia found herself alone. She took advantage of the quiet to close her eyes and rest after her long day. She'd fallen into a light doze, when someone entering the room had her eyes snapping open.

It was one of the nurses who had assisted with the delivery, and she was carrying a swaddled bundle in her arms. She tried to hand the baby to Natalia, but she just shook her head in refusal, squeezing her eyes shut.

"What is wrong with you, child?" the older woman scolded.

"I don't want to see her," Natalia said flatly. "Just take her to whoever is going to care for her."

"What are you talking about?" the nurse asked, confused. "You're her Mama, you're going to take care of her."

Natalia looked at the nurse with suspicious eyes. "Who told you that?"

"Well, there's no one else here to take care of her," she said, clearly starting to lose patience. "And if someone doesn't feed this babe soon, she's going to start screaming well enough to wake the dead."

Tentatively, Natalia reached out for the swaddled baby and took her daughter in her arms for the first time. She looked down at the little girl with impersonal eyes, noting clinically that she had the same thick, dark shock of hair and blue eyes as her father, but she had Natalia's own plump lips and chin. She was pulling the blanket away from her face to get a better look at her, when a tiny fist emerged and wrapped itself around her finger.

An unfamiliar weight settled in Natalia's chest. She didn't have a name for it; she had no frame of reference for this feeling, but as she looked at this tiny fragile creature in her arms looking back at her, she felt as though her heart might actually burst.

The baby was eight days old before the Soldier returned from his mission. When he let himself into their rooms, he found Natalia there, watching the infant sleep. The Black Widow didn't need to hear him to know that he was there, but she didn't turn around either. On silent feet, he crossed the room to stand beside her. As Russia's two most dangerous assassins stood over the bassinet, neither of them spoke for a moment that stretched long into the night.

"What have you decided to call him?" the Soldier asked, the first to break the silence.

"Her," Natalia corrected. "I haven't, yet. I never thought that I'd be allowed to decide. I keep expecting they'll take her away at any moment."

"She needs a name." He didn't try to reassure her that they wouldn't take the baby. He expected much of the same and wouldn't give her false hope. "Names are important."

His words carried weight, coming from a man without one.

"Darya," Natalia said, softly. "It means Owner of Goodness."

"Goodness," he echoed quietly. "Yes. We will call her Darya."

They stood in silence for another long while, until this time it was Natalia who broke the quiet.

"I think," she paused mid-thought. "I think I love her," she confessed into the dark, her chest heavy with this unfamiliar emotion.

The Soldier reached out and trailed his fingers down the baby's perfect cheek. "Love is for children," he said softly, in cryptic agreement.

Natalia looked at the Soldier as he looked at their daughter, and thought that maybe she could love him too.

And so, they were largely left alone to raise their daughter, deep in the compound of Department X. They still were sent out on regular missions, but never at the same time so that there was always someone there to care for Darya. It seemed as though their handlers mostly chose to ignore the little girl's existence, except for the doctors that entered their quarters like clockwork to check her physical and mental progress.

And on that point, everyone was thrilled. Young Darya exceeded all expectations, easily surpassing every benchmark in her development. She was up and running around their suite at eight months old. By the time she was a year old she was speaking in complete sentences in both Russian and English. By two, she had added more languages to her repertoire and by three she was reading and writing in several of them as well. Stealth, agility, aim, and other tactical skills were incorporated into the games she played with her parents, with the little girl having no idea that these were actually the beginnings of her training.

All little Darya knew was that she was loved and cared for by her Mama and Papa. And as long as she behaved appropriately for the men who came to ask her questions and made sure that she was healthy every few weeks, and they kept leaving happy, then nothing in her world had to change.

Her parents however, were all too aware that the status quo could change at any moment.

"Milli moi? Why do you think they let us all stay together?" Natalia whispered, one night.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I believe it's part of their experiment. Also, I overheard two of the technicians speaking the last time they were servicing my arm. Apparently, I am more," he paused as he searched for the correct word, "compliant since the project began."

Natalia nodded, silently recalling a long ago day, early in her own training, glancing out the window and seeing a man with a metal arm struggling with eight armed guards out in the courtyard. He'd been winning, too, until one of the guards had rendered him unconscious with a shock of electricity. At the time, she was confused and perhaps a bit frightened, but all these years later she was better able to understand what she had seen and what it had meant.

Neither of them knew how to be a traditional family, but they managed to create one anyways. And sometimes in the early hours of the morning when they were both lying in bed with their daughter tucked between them, she dared enough to admit, if only to herself, that she was happy.

But she knew it couldn't last forever, and just days before Darya's sixth birthday she was proven correct. They got word that both she and the Soldier would be leaving the compound that very night, on a mission that required both their skill sets. When she questioned who would stay with the girl, Natalia was informed that she was old enough to join the other girls in the dormitory. It was time for her formal training to begin.

They left directly from that mission briefing. There was no time to explain to their daughter what was happening. No time to say goodbye.

They were gone for nine months, shuffled from the end of one mission to the beginning of another. Sometimes together, often apart. But it was on one of those rare occasions that they had finished a mission together, that they were sent back to the compound for some downtime, with nothing requiring their immediate attention or their specialized skill sets.

It was late fall by then, and the threat of snow was already biting in the air as they walked to the commander's office for debriefing. They passed through a courtyard full of little girls about six or seven, all of them dressed the same in shorts and tank tops, standing at attention. They were watching some of the older girls sparring, who Natalia identified as the twelve and thirteen-year olds. She gave them very little thought until she saw one small head snap their direction. She barely recognized her at first. She'd grown at least an inch, her once waist-length curly hair was shorn short to just below her chin, and most dramatically to a mother's eye, was that her bright blue eyes had dulled to a defeated grey.

"Mama! Papa!" Darya called excitedly. She took three running steps towards her parents before a riding crop in the hand of the headmistress clotheslined the little girl across the neck.

"BACK IN FORMATION!"

Natalia would never forget the sound of her baby girl's skull cracking against the cobblestones of the courtyard as she fell. Every instinct in her body screamed at her to run to her daughter, and the twitching of the Soldier's right arm told her that he felt the same way. But they both knew that doing so would only make things worse for her. So Natalia waited for Darya to pick herself up, tears welling in her eyes, and watched her shuffle back into line, before they continued on their way without a word.

After their debrief, they were to separate to their respective quarters. Now that they were no longer Darya's guardians, there was no reason for them to share living space. But before he turned to go, the Soldier spared her one long look. In his eyes she saw a rage like she had never seen from the cool, collected and hardened killer.

It would be the last time she would see him for a long time.

Two days later she was pulled from her bed as the sun was breaking over the eastern mountains. The Winter Soldier was gone and he had stolen their daughter on his way out. And they wanted to know what she knew.

She lost track of how long she was questioned, they didn't believe that she had had nothing to do with their disappearance or that she had no prior knowledge of it. Unfortunately, they were the ones who had trained her to withstand torture, so they had a hard time believing she was telling the truth. They also knew just how much she could stand before breaking.

Eventually though, they resigned themselves to the fact that even if she was withholding information, she wasn't going to break, and they released her to the medical wing. When she arrived, she was administered a tranquilizer which she assumed was to allow her to sleep through the worst of the healing. When she woke to a deep pain in her belly, she knew that she had been wrong.

"What did you do to me?" she asked, when a doctor came to check her healing sutures.

"The project has been canceled. It has been decided that it proves to be a distraction from your primary mission. It was agreed that the possibility of future distractions may inhibit your principal function. Now, that won't be a problem."

Natasha nodded her understanding sharply, and told herself that she didn't care. She hadn't wanted to have the first child, why should she care if she couldn't have more?

Years passed and Natalia threw herself wholeheartedly into her mission. She was elevated from a top agent to a living legend. Even the other graduates of the Black Widow program gave her a wide berth, whispering tales of her deadly exploits behind closed doors.

But everything changed again when she was once more roused in the middle of the night. They had captured the Winter Soldier and her presence was requested. She was escorted to The Chair where he was already strapped in. He looked different than she remembered him. More alive. More human.

He knew what The Chair was, every resident of the Red Room did. It was both a cautionary tale and constant threat over their heads. A part of Natalia wanted to warn him that this was not the same generation of The Chair that he was familiar with. She believed that he hadn't been in The Chair since before the girl was born, and technology had advanced in leaps and bounds since then. What had once simply been a device of torture and conditioning had become something so much more. Something so much worse. He had no idea what he was in for.

"Tell her what happened to the girl!" One of the guards barked.

The Soldier sat stoically.

"TELL HER!"

"I shot her between the eyes, and then I set her body on fire," he confessed, little emotion in his voice, even as his eyes pierced right through her.

"And tell her why!"

"Because I'd rather her dead by my hand, than alive in yours," the Soldier spat at the guard, even while he never tore his gaze from Natalia's own.

The chair was activated and it seemed to Natalia that the screaming went on forever. Once they finally shut the machine off, the Soldier was a blank slate. The man she had cared for more than any other, the father of the child she had loved so dearly, was gone.

"New protocols have been handed down, in regards to the Winter Soldier," the highest-ranking of the armed guards relayed. "He is to be stored in cryostasis whenever not deployed on an active mission, and wiped clean as soon as he returns and reconditioned as a part of his briefing."

The scientists and technicians made note of it, as the empty shell of a man was dragged from the device, not even capable of standing under his own power. She accompanied the guards on the escort to the cryotube, and continued to watch as the Winter Soldier was unceremoniously put away. As she watched the frost cloud over the viewing window, her already guarded heart hardened to ice.

Love was for children, and it no longer had a place in her world.

It was also the moment that she decided that she no longer belonged to Mother Russia. When an opportunity presented itself, she would take it.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Natasha woke with a start. It had been a long time since she had been plagued with dreams of those particular memories, but given the circumstances she wasn't exactly surprised. She sighed and got out of bed; she wouldn't be going back to sleep tonight.

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A/N So does that clear some stuff up? And even more answers will be given next chapter when we get back to Darcy and Natasha in present day :D I hope you all enjoyed it and please feed my muse and let me know what you thought!


	3. GLAVA TRE - THAT WHICH LED US HERE

A/N Happy Monday everyone! Have another chapter!

And as always my ever lasting gratitude to Alexandra926 for ironing all of the wrinkles out of this chapter for me :D

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"I don't know if I should ask how you got in here, or just ask if this is going to be a regular thing now," Darcy said, her voice thick with sleep, not bothering to open her eyes. Part of her was surprised that she hadn't woken up when she came in, her upbringing having trained her to be a light sleeper. But then again, this was _the_ Black Widow she was talking about.

Natasha chuckled lightly, but didn't give her an answer either way.

Darcy cracked one eye open to glance at the clock on her nightstand and closed it again when she saw that it was still early. Too early, when she considered the emotional rollercoaster she'd been on the night before. Last night had left her with an emotional hangover, which she had every intention of spending the rest of the morning sleeping off. Sometimes, having feelings were extremely overrated.

On her part, Natasha didn't seem to be in any hurry to announce her reason for being in Darcy's bedroom so early on a Saturday morning. The soft rubbing of paper betrayed the fact that she was simply sitting on the bed next to her, reading what Darcy guessed was one of the many paperbacks she had laying around her rooms, so she didn't feel bad as she let herself doze lightly.

"I thought you were dead," Natasha said abruptly, in Russian, some ten minutes later.

"I know I was tired last night, but I don't sleep _that_ deep," Darcy mumbled in the same language, seemingly unphased by the non sequitur.

Natasha raised one eyebrow in exasperation. "You know what I mean," she continued in Ukrainian. "They told me you were dead. Your father looked me right in the eye and told me _he killed you_."

That was enough for her to open her eyes and roll over and face her mother. "I'm sorry you had to hear that," Darcy said sincerely, as she too switched languages. She knew exactly what Natasha was doing; it was a game they had played when she was young, or at least she had _thought_ it was a game. It wasn't until she was older that she had realized it was training. Her parents would switch back and forth between languages mid-conversation, and she was expected to keep up. "That couldn't have been a fun experience for either of you."

"No, _fun_ would not be the word I would use."

They both fell back into silence, but this time it was Darcy who was building herself up to say something, and Natasha was allowing her that time.

"So you saw Papa after they captured him?" she finally asked. It was a question, but not the one she really wanted to know the answer to.

Natasha reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind Darcy's ear. "I'm sorry, kitten," she said in Belarusian. "He's gone."

Darcy squeezed her eyes shut as she nodded, allowing herself only a moment to let the wave of sadness wash over her before she opened her eyes and pushed it away. "I knew," she admitted, following the changing languages. "I've known for a long time. I left him a trail to follow for over two years after we split up. On my sixteenth birthday, I finally admitted to myself that he wasn't coming," she added, with a sad sort of self-deprecating smile.

"How did he convince them that you were dead?" Natasha asked the question that had been weighing heavily on her since the revelation that Darcy was the daughter she had long since mentally buried. "Do you know?"

"They'd been on our trail for weeks. Nothing we did could shake them," Darcy said, her eyes unfocused as she recalled a time she usually chose to forget. "It was definitely a contingency plan I know he had hoped he wouldn't have to use. He stole a body from the morgue; a girl my age and build, and staged my death. He hoped that if they believed that he had killed me, then they wouldn't be looking for me anymore. The second hope for that plan was that if he was on his own, he might have a better chance at losing them. And then he could meet back up with me in a couple of weeks. Obviously, that never happened."

"If I had known you were alive – that you were alone," Natasha said, this time in Bulgarian, "I would have come for you."

Darcy cocked her head, "Would you have?" It was a sincere question, her face and tone free of judgement.

Natasha considered her question before answering. Despite her resolution that she was going to defect the night she'd been told her daughter was dead, it had still taken her years to go through with it. But perhaps if she'd known it was a lie, she would have had the impetus she'd needed to make her break. No, if she'd defected so soon after they had recaptured the Winter Soldier, they would have been relentless in hunting her down. If she had managed to find Darya, she would have only put her in more danger after her father had sacrificed himself to throw them off her trail.

"I would like to think so," she answered honestly, "but I don't know."

"That's fair," Darcy said with a shrug. "Sometimes," she continued softly, unknowingly echoing Natasha's thoughts, "I wonder if he really ever had any intention of coming back to find me. Or if he let himself be caught to distract them from me. So they wouldn't look too hard at the body he burned."

Natasha didn't want to lie to her, but she had a feeling that was a distinct possibility. Fortunately, Darcy spoke again and saved her from delivering a hard truth.

"I'm sorry," she said switching the conversation back to English, "this is too many emotions and too many languages before coffee."

"You're rusty," Natasha replied.

"I know. Other than English, my French and Spanish are my strongest these days. My Slavic languages would be even worse if I hadn't picked Eastern European Studies as my major, a couple degrees back," Darcy agreed. "Come on, I'll make coffee. And once that kicks in, I'll even make breakfast. What are your thoughts on cinnamon roll pancakes?" she asked, literally rolling out of bed until her feet hit the floor.

"Favorable," Natasha replied, extricating herself from the bed with far more grace.

"You know, Steve has unrestricted access to my place. If he had let himself in this morning, I'm not sure how I would have explained you being in my bed," Darcy laughed, leading the way to her kitchen, making a beeline for the coffeemaker.

"I passed him in the hall this morning, and he was on his way to the park for a run. When he leaves the Tower for his morning run, he's always gone at least two and a half hours, and then he'll shower and make one of those awful protein shakes before he'll come looking for you."

"I'm impressed," Darcy said. "Do you have such a good bead on all of your teammates?"

"To a point. But Steve is the easiest. He's a creature of habit. You know they say that it's good for the elderly to keep a routine," she teased.

One of Darcy's eyebrows shot up so fast it practically disappeared under her hairline. "An age joke? Is that _really_ the hill you want to die on?" she asked, bemused.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Natasha said, the very picture of innocence. "I'm twenty nine."

"Yeah, and I'm really twenty six," Darcy scoffed, with a roll of her eyes as she poured a mug of coffee and slid it across the breakfast bar to her mother. "How long have you been with SHIELD, anyways?"

"Ten years next month," Natasha said, doctoring her coffee with just a dab of cream and three sugars.

"So you said you were nineteen, when you defected?"

"Seemed as good an age as any. Gave me a few years to have gained a reputation, if I said I started young enough," she shrugged. And it was true that she had started that young; it was just a few years further back than SHIELD thought.

"And how have you been able to stay in one spot for ten years? How has nobody noticed that you haven't aged a day since you joined?" Darcy asked, genuinely curious, as she cradled her own mug of coffee between her hands.

"It helps that I inspire legitimate fear in most of the agents," Natasha smirked. "They don't get too good of a look when they're afraid to make eye contact. It also helps that I'm a specialist; before joining the Avengers I was moved around the organization so much that I wasn't seeing the same people day in and day out. The advancements of cosmetic surgery has also helped. I'm sure that many agents would assume that I've been dabbling in Botox. It would make sense that someone of my skill set would want to remain looking as youthful as possible. And I also drastically change my hair every year or two; that helps to denote the passage of time for most people who I've known over multiple years," she added, as an afterthought.

"That makes sense," Darcy mused, thinking it over.

"To be honest, I wasn't sure how much longer I was going to be able to stay with SHIELD," she admitted. "I had never intended on staying this long."

"What changed?"

"Steve has actually helped buy me time, and now you being here will too. The more of us that aren't ageing, the less noticeable it will be," Natasha said.

That wasn't what Darcy was asking and they both knew it, but she let it go for now.

"How have _you_ dealt with it?" Natasha asked, before taking a sip of her coffee.

Darcy had no doubts that her mother had already figured out exactly how she had handled hiding the fact that she didn't age from the few hints she had already dropped. But she also realized that one, Natasha probably wasn't overly comfortable with sharing as much personal information as she just shared with anyone even if it was with her own daughter, and two, maybe she just wanted to hear her talk about it, which was actually kind of nice. Darcy had never been able to talk about it with someone else before.

"This is actually the oldest I've ever been. I've never made it to twenty five before," she admitted. "So I told you I was fourteen when I ended up on my own. Luckily for me I suppose, I developed early and looked old for my age and at fourteen I could easily pass for sixteen. Papa left me with the resources and knowledge to take care of myself so no one questioned the fact that I was driving myself around and staying in a safe house by myself. By the time I was sixteen, I could pass for eighteen and I enrolled in college for the first time."

"How old were you when you stopped aging normally?" Natasha interrupted curiously.

"I don't really know, to be honest," Darcy shrugged. "I think somewhere between seventeen and twenty? My most educated guess is that when my hormone levels changed at the end of puberty my aging locked in as well. I didn't even really notice until I was in my late twenties. My _actual_ late twenties that is," she smirked. "I tried to run some tests on myself when I was a biology/pre-med major once, but I couldn't get too far into it without drawing attention to myself."

"Interesting," Natasha said simply. Both she and Darcy's father had been injected with a strain of the same super soldier serum that Steve had, in order for their aging to be slowed to a near stop. She couldn't help but think about what the scientists would have done if they had learned that it had somehow affected their genetic code enough that it had been passed to their daughter without the extra chemical catalyst.

"I'd never been in a traditional classroom environment and discovered that I loved it. So once I was almost ready to graduate, I ditched that school, forged a new identity, reset my age back to eighteen and re-enrolled in another university and started all over again."

"And you've been doing that ever since?"

"I've taken a semester off here and there, but a college coed is the perfect cover," Darcy said. "Campuses by their nature are a transient population, so no one questions when someone appears or disappears suddenly. Room and board means I don't have to worry about rent or groceries, so I never needed more than a part-time job. I did eventually start making my new identities transfer students so I could stop taking the same prerequisites over and over, and if I started out somewhere around 'my' twenty first birthday, it made life easier if I didn't have to wait three years to get a drink at a bar."

"You never got bored or tired of it?"

"Are you kidding? I loved it. There's so much to learn, about so many things. Sometimes I would major in the same thing a couple times back-to-back with different focuses and really dive into things, or I would major in it again, years later. For example I, Darcy Lewis, was a Political Science major, Class of 2012, which was a completely different sociopolitical landscape to navigate then when Darlene Brown majored in Political Science, Class of 1991."

Natasha nodded, she was all too aware of how true that was.

"And sometimes I'll just jump to something else entirely," Darcy continued. "I told you that before SHIELD got involved, I was preparing to ditch Darcy Lewis at the end of the summer. I mean let's be real, there was no reason for a Polysci major to apply to an internship in astrophysics. But I was thinking about going to Berkeley next and majoring in astronomy and I wanted to see if I would like it before I committed."

"That makes more sense than any of your cover reasons for taking the internship," Natasha said.

"Right?" Darcy smirked, as she drained the last of her coffee and started assembling the ingredients she would need to make breakfast. "It did help that Jane really didn't have any other applicants," she laughed. "I'm glad she didn't though, space is pretty awesome, even without Norse Gods and other assorted aliens falling from the sky. Darla Jenkins would have had a good time at Berkeley."

"And what are your thoughts on Darla Jenkins and Berkeley now?" Natasha asked. Her voice was light but the question was weighted.

"I'm pretty attached to Darcy these days," she said, as she cracked eggs with a practiced hand. "I have to admit, Darcy is the only one who's ever really been real."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't really remember what it felt like, being Darya," Darcy admitted. "I don't even know if a six-year old can really have an awareness of a sense of self. And I've never really _been_ anyone since. Papa did his best to let me have some kind of childhood, but it was hard with us constantly on the move, a new name, a new identity in every town, always looking over our shoulders. Not really the right environment to 'find yourself'. And since I've been on my own, every alias I've created, every persona I've embodied, is a costume I've made the conscious choice to wear. And even if it was a subconscious thing, I knew that I was never really any of those girls, they were characters I was playing, a front that I was presenting to the world."

Darcy paused to look at Natasha to see if she was making sense. The other woman nodded her encouragement, she understood exactly what she was saying, probably better than anyone else in the world could.

"And then, somewhere between New Mexico, and London, and New York, Darcy stopped feeling like a costume. I think it was because she changed and grew, because I changed and grew and that's when I knew I was Darcy." She frowned deeply, not feeling like she was explaining it well. She'd never had to explain this to another person before; hell, she hadn't really tried to formulate it in words even to herself. She backed up and tried again.

"Before Darcy, I was in a holding pattern, I was replaying the same late adolescent/young adult years, over and over again. I never needed to grow. I mean I learned, I learned more than most people could ever dream of learning, but it was all in a nice controlled setting that I was comfortable with and could manipulate however I wanted. And then Thor and the Destroyer happened, and the Battle of New York, and the Dark Elves in London, and I realized that who Darcy was as a person had fundamentally changed because of her life experiences, and that's when I realized that Darcy changed because I changed because those were _my_ life experiences because I _am_ Darcy." She put the stainless steel mixing bowl down on the granite countertop with a little more force than was necessary. "I know that all sounds like I've got Dissociative Identity Disorder and I'm integrating alters, but does that make sense?"

"No, it actually makes perfect sense to me," Natasha reassured her. "Although you're right and anyone eavesdropping might think you need to be evaluated. But I know exactly where you're coming from."

Darcy let out a sigh of relief, as she ladled the batter onto the preheated griddle. "And I really like my life. I like the person I am and who I see myself becoming. And now I have actual roots, I have a history that really belongs to me, and I've got things," she gestured around the apartment. "I've never had more belongings than what could easily be tossed in the car before. And I have _people_. Beyond the casual friendships I would make with classmates and dorm neighbors. People I care about and love, and that care about and love me. I honestly didn't think that would ever be something that I would have. So yeah, I'm pretty attached to Darcy Lewis."

Natasha smiled, glad to hear her daughter didn't have any intentions of picking up and moving, right after she had found her again.

"I'm pretty attached to Natasha Romanoff too," she said casually, saying in her own way that she not only completely understood where Darcy was coming from, but that she agreed wholeheartedly, and that she wasn't going anywhere either.

"I'm glad," Darcy smiled back, easily deciphering the deeper meaning of her words.

They fell into a companionable silence for a few minutes as Natasha sipped her coffee and Darcy worked on completing breakfast.

"Having people is exhausting," Natasha blurted.

"Isn't it, though?!" Darcy exclaimed, looking up from where she was flipping pancakes onto plates.

"Worth it," Natasha admitted quietly into her mug, looking at her daughter from over the rim.

"Totally," Darcy agreed a wide smile on her as she put a plate in front of Natasha before sitting down with her own, watching the redhead carefully as she took her first bite.

"Oh my god, _kotyonok_ , these are amazing," Natasha moaned as she chewed. "Now I get why Steve is always talking about your cooking when we're out on missions."

Darcy practically beamed, pleased that she liked them. "Well, you know the quickest way to a man's heart."

"Through his fourth and fifth rib."

"Well yes, there is that. But I was thinking more along the lines of his stomach," Darcy retorted with a snort. "I suppose it all depends on what your end game is."

Both women were grinning widely when a soft pneumatic hiss signaled Darcy's front door opening.

"I could smell pancakes all the way down the hall-" Steve stopped short when he saw Natasha sitting at the breakfast bar. "Oh, I didn't know you had company."

"Good morning, Steve," Natasha said casually, as if this was an everyday occurrence. "Were your ears burning? We were just talking about you."

"You were?"

"In a fashion," she said with a lethal smile. "We were talking about the best way to your heart," she explained, making Darcy laugh.

"Figuratively or literally?" Steve asked, knowing both women well enough that he knew he had to ask.

"Literally," Natasha said, taking a bite of her breakfast.

"Figuratively," Darcy insisted at the same time.

"Riiiiight," Steve drawled, not looking very assured.

Darcy giggled. Natasha might have a keen understanding of Steve's morning habits, but Steve certainly had Natasha's number as well. "I doubled the recipe, so there is still a ton of batter left," she said, changing the subject. "If you give me a couple minutes to finish eating I'll make you up some, or if you don't want to wait, the griddle should still be hot."

"I'll do it. You take your time eating," Steve replied, stopping to drop a kiss to her temple on his way to the stove. "I'll admit I'm surprised to see you here, Nat," he said casually, as he ladled the batter into pancakes the size of dinner plates.

It hadn't escaped his notice that Natasha appeared to have been avoiding his girlfriend all week, and that Darcy had become increasingly twitchy since the Black Widow had been in residence. In fact, he had only planned on giving them a couple more days before he confronted one or both of them about their behavior to see if he could resolve the tension. But apparently that was no longer necessary. He was glad to see it, he wanted his partner and his best girl to get along, but he was curious as to what had changed so suddenly.

"Well you better get used to it, Rogers," Natasha said chasing the last bit of her breakfast with the dredges of her coffee. "I think Darcy and I are going to get along quite well." She winked at Darcy behind Steve's back as she was dropping her dirty plates in the sink. "And Darcy, put on some gym clothes when you're done eating," she ordered, already moving towards the door.

"What, why?" Darcy asked, her head shooting up in alarm.

"We start training in forty five minutes and I want to evaluate where your baseline is."

"But it's Saturday!" she whined.

"Forty five minutes, _kotyonok_!" Natasha called from the hallway, as the door slid shut behind her.

* * *

A/N So now you all have an idea of what Darcy has been up to since in the mean time :D I hope you all enjoyed it and please feed my muse and let me know what you thought!


	4. GLAVA CHETVERTAYA-NOT A SOLDIER OR A SPY

A/N Hey all! It's been awhile... I've been busy playing in other fandom sandboxes lately, but I haven't forgotten about this one, I promise... I want to give a shout outs to cheekylady who was my cheerleader when I first decided to take a crack at finishing this chapter and to Alexandra926 for helping make sure it was subitable for public consumption...

I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

"Hey Cap, I think Nat is trying to steal your girl again," Tony said when he and Steve walked into the common room to find Darcy curled up on the couch with her head in Natasha's lap, while they watched a Great British Bake Off marathon on TV.

It had been a month since Natasha had arrived at the tower, and three weeks since the she had reconnected with Darcy. Since then the social status quo had shifted within the tower, much to the general surprise and curious confusion of the other residents of the tower.

All they knew was that Darcy and Natasha had been thick as thieves since the moment they'd first met, and by all outward appearances, immediately decided to be best friends. The two women could almost always be found together in their down time. And while Darcy had a reputation for being able to befriend everyone she met, Nat most definitely did not. In fact, those who knew her best were the most surprised at their fast friendship. Clint had even wondered if Darcy knew some kind of witchcraft, because it had taken Natasha six months before she had so much as smiled in his direction, and yet in a matter of weeks the two women were here sharing inside jokes and bowls of popcorn, while having Netflix marathons.

Choosing not to respond to Tony's jibe verbally, both women simultaneously raised a middle finger in Tony's direction.

"See now, that's just wrong," Tony said in a not-so-quiet aside to an amused Steve. "Don't tell me you're comfortable with this. Because I don't think I'm comfortable with this."

"It's going to be under-proved and under-baked if he doesn't hurry up," Darcy critiqued one of the bakers in Russian.

"Paul's going to crucify him for it," Natasha agreed in the same language.

"Yeah, he's got a real sadistic streak when it's his turn for the technical challenge."

"You know it's rude to speak in a language not everyone in the room understands," Tony announced from where he was getting one of his green smoothies out of the fridge.

"He just thinks we're talking about him again," Natasha smirked, as she continued to run her fingers through Darcy's curls, who was enjoying it just as much as she had when she was a little girl. Reminding Natasha why they'd started calling her kotyonok in the first place.

"So we should make it worse by turning around to look at him and laughing, right?" Darcy replied.

"Obviously," Natasha agreed, as both women did just that.

"No, I don't like this at all," Tony said as he took his drink and headed towards the elevator. "And under my own roof, too. Never should have let you two meet. Bad news from the start."

"Considering he's supposed to be one of the smartest men in the world, you'd think he'd realize you two only do that because he's so easy to rile," Steve grinned, as he came over to sit down on the chair next to the couch the women were spread out across.

"Which is exactly why we don't do it to you," Darcy smirked, switching back to English.

"How'd the meetings go?" Natasha asked curiously, since she was currently on vacation and hadn't gone into SHIELD with Steve that day. Fury had been surprised when she'd told him she was taking personal leave, since she almost never took her mandatory downtime let alone voluntary vacation time, but she had so much time off accrued he certainly couldn't tell her no.

"Long and boring," Steve groaned, glad to be out of there. "You didn't miss much. What did you guys do with your day?"

"You're looking at it," Darcy said with a shrug.

"Really? All day?"

"We had a training session this morning," Natasha added. "This is her reward for keeping the bitching to a minimum."

"I require bribery and copious positive reinforcement," Darcy admitted with an unrepentant grin.

Natasha chuckled but didn't disagree, only nudging at the younger woman's shoulder so she'd sit up so she could slide out from under her. "More coffee, kotyonok?" she asked Darcy as she picked up the mugs which were sitting empty on the coffee table.

"Yes please," Darcy replied happily, never one to turn down good caffeine.

"Steve, you want anything?" Natasha asked over her shoulder as she walked towards the kitchen.

"I'll take a bottle of water if you don't mind," he requested.

"You got it," she replied, as she busied herself with the coffee maker.

"I missed you today," Darcy told Steve as she leaned over to give him a proper greeting.

"I was only gone for five hours," he replied against her her lips, a bemused smile on his face.

"What can I say, I like your face, and I miss it when it's not around to look at," she shrugged shamelessly as she kissed him again.

"Just my face, huh?" he asked, as he reached out to pull her onto his lap.

"I suppose the rest of ya ain't a chore to look at either," Darcy replied with a smirk, before playfully nipping at his bottom lip.

"Heads up, Rogers!"

It was only his super soldier reflexes that had Steve pulling away in time to catch the water bottle that Natasha had sent hurtling at his head from across the room.

"Was that entirely necessary?" Darcy asked unamused, switching back to Russian.

Natasha just grinned as she walked back towards the couple with two cups of steaming coffee in her hands. "I knew he would catch it," she replied in the same language.

It wasn't that she disapproved of the relationship. Quite the opposite, actually. Steve Rogers was probably the only man in the world that she considered good enough for her daughter. But as she'd already told Darcy, it was her god-given right to give him a hard time and make sure he stayed on his toes.

Darcy just rolled her eyes at her mother, as she took the mug she handed her and went back to her own seat on the couch.

"You've never told me where you learned Russian," Steve asked, curious, aware that it wasn't one of the more common second languages to learn.

"It's my first language actually," Darcy told him honestly, ignoring the way Natasha froze for just a split second as she was bringing her coffee to her lips. "Well, sort of. I think I learned English and Russian pretty much at the same time."

"Really?" Steve asked, his interest piqued. "How come?"

"Yeah," she nodded, telling him as close to the real story as she could. "My mother was a Russian ballerina and my father was an American soldier, so they taught me both."

Steve thought back to what he'd learned about US-Russian relations in the eighties. "That must have been…"

"It wasn't exactly sanctioned, what with the Cold War and all," she shrugged, finishing his train of thought. "So for my own safety my father brought me back to the States when I was little."

"What about your mother?" Steve asked.

"She had to stay behind," Darcy sighed. "My father barely got me out of the country. There's no way all three of us could have escaped undetected. We might have all been killed if we'd been caught. So it was just me and my dad until I lost him when I as a teenager."

"Well, what about your mother now?"

"What do you mean?" Darcy asked, it taking all her will power not to glance over at Natasha sitting next to her.

"I mean, have you tried tracking her down recently?" he asked. "The Cold War is over, and by all odds she should still be alive, right?" Before he could go on, his phone let off its text alert in his pocket, and he pulled it out to look at the message. "Tony wants to show me something, but we'll talk about this later okay? We're still on for dinner tonight, right?"

"Yeah," she nodded, looking forward to their date. "I'll be ready to go by six?"

"Perfect, I'll see you at six," he said as he stood, smiling at his girlfriend as he leaned down to press a kiss to her temple. "Nat, I'll see you later," he nodded at the redhead. "Enjoy the rest of your Bake Off marathon," he told them both, before heading for the elevator.

"What the hell was that?" Natasha whispered harshly as soon as the elevator doors closed behind him.

"What was what?" Darcy asked, taken aback by the fire in Natasha's eyes.

"What happened to you being Canadian? What happened to Gerald and Renee Lewis, the writer and music teacher?" she asked angrily. "Steve has an eidetic memory, he will catch the inconsistencies in your already established backstory."

"Oh, that," Darcy shrugged, unconcerned. "We've never really talked about my childhood before. I just implied that I don't really like talking about my past, and since Steve doesn't really like talking about his either, he's respected that and left it alone. In fact no one knows about my 'background', because if there's one thing I've learned over the years, is if you mention being an orphan most people just get uncomfortable and leave you alone about it."

"It doesn't matter what you have or haven't told Steve or anyone else, the fact is that you already have a personal history on file at SHIELD," Natasha snapped.

"Steve respects me too much to go digging into my personnel file," Darcy snapped right back. "You're the only one that's done that. And nobody else cares about the background of the assistant that tagged along with Jane when she started working here. Are you seriously mad at me about this?" she asked, incredulous.

"Yes, I am!" Natasha told her, setting her coffee down on the table with more force than necessary. "Because that was incredibly sloppy and you should know better than that."

"Where are you going?" Darcy asked, as Natasha stood.

"I'm going to go clean up your mess," she told her sharply. "I have to go change your file and kill off a Russian ballerina."

" _What-?_ "

"There needs to be a paper trail to follow in case Rogers tries to find your 'mother' for you," she said pointedly, as she stood and headed for the elevator.

"You're overreacting!" Darcy exclaimed to Natasha's retreating back. "I didn't get this far on my own by being stupid," she pointed out, but it was no use as her mother was already gone. She huffed and turned back to the TV with her arms crossed over her chest. "See if I tell you who gets Star Baker this week," she grumbled under her breath to no one.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"UGG!" Darcy exclaimed as she hit the ground hard, her head bouncing against the mats.

"Up. Again."

Darcy blew the hair that escaped from her ponytail out of her face as she rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed herself upright. She hardly thought that she'd have any more success with the takedown Natasha was making her learn this time around, but she tried anyways.

Less than a minute later, she was flat on her back again.

"Up. Again."

"Come on, Nat," Clint said from where where he'd stopped his own workout to watch the two women train from the sidelines. "I think you're being a little rough on her this morning."

"She needs to learn," Natasha responded sharply.

"I agree with Clint," Darcy groaned from her place on the floor.

Natasha ignored her. " _Up_. _Again_."

Darcy sighed, but once again climbed to her feet. She'd been getting her ass kicked all morning. Natasha was obviously still mad at her for the day before, and was taking it out on her now. It probably didn't help that she'd gotten in late from her date last night with Steve and had forgotten to set an alarm, so she'd still been in bed when Natasha had called her up asking why she wasn't in the gym yet.

"Seriously though, I don't think Cap is gonna be happy if you break his girlfriend," Clint interjected, when Darcy went sprawling across the mat again. "Maybe take it a little easier on her."

"I can confirm that it would definitely make him unhappy," Darcy agreed, not moving. "And personally I'm not thrilled about it either."

"She can take it," Natasha insisted. "And anyone who is gonna come after her, isn't gonna take it easy on her, either."

"Look, I get that you've adopted Lewis," Clint continued, ignoring the death glare Natasha sent him at that statement. Having no idea how close to the mark his off-handed statement hit. "But you don't need to turn her into a Baby Widow." He'd been more surprised than anyone that Nat had taken to Darcy so quickly. She might be rusty at making friends, but this was hardly the way to go about it.

"Stay out of it, Clint," she snapped in English before switching to Ukrainian. "I said up, Darya. We will go again until you get it right."

"I don't know what you want from me," Darcy snapped back in the same language, sitting up, but refusing to climb back to her feet.

"I want you to be better!"

"I'm doing the best I can!" Darcy exclaimed, at the end of her rope as much as Natasha was at the end of hers.

"I doubt that," Natasha scoffed. "I refuse to believe that your father did not teach you better than this."

"No, he didn't teach me this," Darcy spat, "because he didn't want me to end up a killer like you!"

Natasha's face went stony, completely wiping clear of any previous emotion. Clint pushed away from where he was leaning against the wall, in case he had to intervene. Usually when Natasha got that look on her face, someone was going to end up bleeding. Or worse. But instead she just looked at Darcy for a long moment, before turning and leaving the gym without a word.

"Are you alright?" Clint asked, genuinely concerned, as he crossed over to where Darcy had flopped backwards onto the map and was staring at the ceiling. "I don't know what's gotten into her."

Darcy groaned and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She knew exactly what had gotten into Natasha, but she wasn't about to explain it. "I'll live."

"What the hell was that about?" Clint wondered, the echo of the gym door slamming shut behind Natasha still reverberating through the room. He'd been watching the last exchange like it was a tennis match, but hadn't understood it since Nat had specifically chosen a language he didn't know.

"That was me putting my foot in my mouth," Darcy sighed, letting her arms drop to her sides."Shit. Now I'm going to have to go apologize."

Clint held out an arm to give her a hand up. "Good luck with that, Lewis."

She took his extended hand and let him pull her to her feet. "Thanks, Barton, I think I'm gonna need it."

Darcy had fully planned on going to find Natasha straight off, but despite her intentions, she ended up back at her own place instead. She walked through the door and was happy to find Steve right where she'd left him, lounging on her couch with his feet up while he reviewed the latest STRIKE reports.

"You're back early," he said, clearly surprised to see her, as she wordlessly wedged herself between him and the back of the couch.

Darcy just made a noncommittal noise as she burrowed underneath his arm, paying no mind to the paperwork he was attempting to read, until she had wrapped herself around his middle. She rested her head on his chest, taking comfort in the slow and steady beat of his heart.

"I take it training didn't go well this morning?" he asked leadingly, as he set aside his reports so he could give her his full attention.

"That's an understatement," she muttered into the soft jersey knit of his tee-shirt.

"What happened?"

"Nat and I are in a fight," she sighed.

Steve was genuinely surprised to hear that. "Really? It wasn't because you were late this morning, was it?" he asked, with a frown. "Because that was as much my fault as yours."

Steve had been completely supportive of the idea of Nat training Darcy, liking the idea of his girlfriend being able to handle herself if she got into trouble when he or one of the other Avengers weren't around. But if it was causing problems, he'd go talk to Natasha. Remind her that Darcy was a civilian, not an agent.

"No, it wasn't that," she sighed. "Although it probably didn't help."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he offered.

"No," she said morosely. "I just want to lay here."

"Alright, you don't have to," he assured her, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back.

She lasted all of thirty seconds before she started talking. "She was already mad at me from something that happened yesterday, which she totally shouldn't have been mad about, by the way. So she was punishing me by being a total hard ass during training this morning. So obviously it wasn't going well, and she was frustrated with me and I was frustrated with her, so she said something and I said something worse back, and then…"

"And then what?" he prompted when she trailed off.

"She walked away," Darcy said miserably.

"What?"

"She just walked away," she repeated. "She just left without a word. I think I really hurt her feelings."

"I didn't know that was possible," Steve quipped, before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, well, I managed it," Darcy said with a humorless little laugh. "I am a garbage human being. Nobody should talk to me ever."

"You are not," Steve quickly refuted. "Besides, it doesn't sound like Nat is completely blameless," he added. Darcy may not have told him what their fight was about, but he knew her well enough to know that she didn't just senselessly attack people.

"She may have started it, but I finished it," she mumbled into his chest. "And I feel terrible about it."

"So, you'll fix it," he reassured her, having complete faith that she could smooth things over.

"I need to apologize," she said, clearly not enthusiastic at the prospect.

"That sounds like an excellent start," he agreed.

"I should probably go now," she sighed, burrowing further into his embrace, "before it has a chance to fester."

"You're probably right."

"Can I stay here for a few more minutes first?"

Steve tightened his arms around her, holding her close. "Of course you can."

It took almost forty minutes of intensive snuggling before Darcy steeled herself enough to go face her angry mother.

"Well," Darcy said, as she extricated herself from Steve's embrace, "if Nat doesn't accept my apology and kills me instead, it was nice knowing you, Rogers. Please remember me fondly. And don't forget to water my plants."

"Godspeed, Lewis," Steve replied with a smart ass salute.

Darcy returned his salute with a lazy one of her own, and turned to leave until Steve caught her wrist.

"It's gonna be okay," he said with quiet confidence, when she turned back to see why he stopped her. He let his hand slide down her wrist to give her fingers a gentle squeeze. "I have complete faith in you."

Darcy smiled and nodded, before walking out the door.

It didn't take her as long as she would have liked before she was standing at Natasha's door.

"So J, you gonna let me in?" Darcy asked JARVIS, wondering if Natasha had preemptively barred her entrance. When the door slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss, she was relieved that her mother wasn't so angry that she had revoked her unrestricted access.

Darcy spotted Natasha immediately. Not that the other woman was hiding, sitting in plain sight in the corner of her sofa, her legs tucked underneath her, a cup of tea cradled between her hands. She didn't give any indication that she was aware of her presence as she crossed over to the couch, but Darcy knew better than that.

She remained silent, not even so much as glancing over as Darcy settled down into the opposite corner of the sofa, just continuing to placidly sip at her tea.

"I didn't mean it," Darcy finally said, speaking first since she knew that Natasha wouldn't.

"Yes, you did," Natasha replied, finally breaking her silence. "You meant exactly what you said. It was written all over your face."

Darcy sighed, wishing, not for the first time, that her parents weren't human lie detectors. Of course it had been decades since she had cause for such thoughts to cross her mind, which just reinforced how much she wanted things set back to rights between them.

"Okay, fine," she conceded. "I was telling the truth, but it came out all wrong. What I should have said, was that Papa didn't want me to **have** to be like you," Darcy amended. When Natasha finally looked at her, her expression still guarded, but listening, she continued. "He didn't want me to be made into a weapon. He especially didn't want to do that to me himself. So instead, he taught me to defend myself, to get away, how to blend in, and how to hide. He never wanted me to be made into a weapon," she repeated, "because he hated that both of you were forced to be. So he didn't teach me to be a soldier like him, or a spy like you. He taught me to be a survivor."

Natasha didn't respond immediately and Darcy didn't have anything more to say, so the two women simply sat in silence for several long moments.

"You terrify me," Natasha finally said.

Darcy said up straight in alarm. " _What_?!" That was the absolute last thing she had expected her to say.

Natasha leaned forward so she could put her mug down on the coffee table. "You _terrify_ me," she repeated. "In a way I didn't even know I could still feel fear."

" _Why_?!"

"Because I could lose you all over again," Natasha admitted painfully, "and I just got you back."

"Oh," Darcy said softly, all the wind knocked out of her sails. She hadn't really considered that. "I've made it a long time on my own, I know how to take care of myself," she pointed out.

"And you've also never been in this much danger since your father faked your death," Natasha countered.

"What-"

"You're important to me, you're important to Steve. Hell, you're important to the whole team, and that puts a target on your back. We have a lot of dangerous enemies, and I hate that you could be used to get to us," she explained. "And it kills me that simply having you back in my life puts you in danger. But I'm too selfish to give you up again."

"Well that's good, since I'm not going anywhere," Darcy said, "even if you wanted me to."

"I don't," Natasha reiterated. "As much as it scares me, I could never regret it. I just hate that you'd be safer if I still thought you were dead."

"To be fair, Thor was the one that dragged me back into the world of supers," Darcy pointed out. "And I was the one that persuaded Jane to take the job with Stark which cemented my place here, and I had already been dating Steve for like six months before you found out I was here."

Natasha just gave her a _look_.

"Okay, I get what you mean though," Darcy conceded. "But I'm not ignorant to the dangers either. There's a reason Steve and I have kept our relationship out of the public eye. He doesn't want me getting used to get to him any more than you do. And this," she pulled the necklace she always wore out from inside her shirt, "is from Tony, it has a tracker that he can trace in case I ever do get nabbed. Jane has one too."

Natasha didn't look reassured.

Darcy sighed. "Look, I know deviating from my established backstory was sloppy," she admitted. "You were right about that, and I shouldn't have be so blasé about it. But I don't like lying to Steve more than I have to. It wasn't hard at the beginning because lying about my past is what I do, but the more serious we get the worse I feel about not being up front with him."

"You want to tell Steve the truth." It was a statement, not a question.

"I love him," Darcy said unrepentantly. "But, it's not just my secret to tell." She knew without asking that even if she was prepared to tell Steve the truth about her origins, Natasha was not ready to have the secrets she'd guarded so carefully for the past ten years exposed. "So that was as close to the truth as I could get without outing us completely."

The two women sat in silence for several long moments, each caught up in their own thoughts.

"I fixed your SHIELD file," Natasha finally said, sounding conciliatory for her part in their argument. "And I checked the access records. It appears that I was the only person to read your file since Coulson originally created it."

"I told you, I'm just little ol' Darcy Lewis, the Political Science major who was in the wrong place at the right time and tagged along for the ride," she said with a self-deprecating smirk. "No one is pulling my file."

"Just stick to your new story from here on out and you should be fine."

"If it makes you feel any better, when Steve brought the topic up again at dinner last night, I told him that I couldn't remember my father ever using my mother's real name in front of me, which is technically the truth," Darcy mentioned. "I also told him that I'd tried to hunt my mother down years ago and couldn't find anything, which is also technically the truth, so there's nowhere for him to even start looking if he wanted to. I asked him to just leave it alone, and he said he would."

"Fine."

"Alright."

They both fell silent once again.

"I'm not going to apologize for worrying about you."

"I'm not asking you to," Darcy replied.

"But I'm sorry about this morning." Natasha was very rarely wrong and admitted it even less.

"I'm sorry too."

"Come here," Natasha opened up her arms, and Darcy quickly closed the gap between them to hug her mother, everything forgiven between them. "I just need you to be safe," she said into her hair.

"I'll do everything I can to stay that way," Darcy promised.

But Natasha knew it wasn't that simple. Darya had been her greatest weakness from the moment the nurse had laid the baby girl in her arms. Her unavoidable love for her daughter was something that could be exploited by anyone who knew enough to use it against her. They'd both been safer in the years that they were apart. But while she hated having such an obvious vulnerability, she'd destroy anyone or anything that tried to take Darcy away from her.

"I know you will," she said, squeezing her tighter. "I'll make sure of it."

She'd burn the whole world down if it meant keeping her safe.

* * *

A/N Well there it is! I hope you enjoyed it! I'd love to know what you thought :D


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